Fullmetal Escort
by somniphobiac
Summary: Warning! Mature themes, deaths, etc ahead. Making a deal with the wrong people led them here. Now, it's up to slaves Edna and Allison to find their freedom and get their bodies back, hoping to not just survive, but live as well.
1. Moving Fast

**A/N: Please feel free to review! Not proof read. This is a pretty strange and dark AU, so please be aware of that!**

Things weren't supposed to just end like this. We knew everything came at a price, and still we ignored it. And it cost us our bodies. And somewhat our lives.

It was never going to be a day like any other. My big sister and I had planned this for months. See, when you live in a small town like Resembool, word spreads like wildfire. The news of our late mother's fate became rumors and then facts to everyone the morning after her death, and soon enough, we became the source of pity for everyone. Edna hated it. If there was anything that she hated most in the world besides liars and criminals, it was to be looked down on. I still remember her amber eyes filled with the flames of fury when she was offered gifts because of the death.

"You were always the more gentle and grateful one, Allison," Grandma Pinako had told me one night.

But I didn't believe it was true. Because if she could see me now, she'd probably be disappointed. We attempted use human transmutation to revive our mother, but that thing...whatever it was...Ed told me she was certain it wasn't her. But I was scared. Scared that I had caused Mom significant pain, bringing her back to life, only for her to die in agony once more. Edna told me that even if that were true, it wasn't completely my fault.

She had a tendency to blame things on herself, I'd wish she'd cut me some slack and not take all the credit. It's like the reason she's short (I know because she's complained a bit) is because of the weight and guilt that's found a home resting on her shoulders.

I should be grateful that I'm alive. But really, I hate it. It's selfish. Sometimes I think that everything would be better if I never lived. If Sister let me die, maybe I wouldn't be such a burden.

"Al? Al? Allison?!" The little voice in the speaker inside me rang.

"Y-yes? I'm sorry, Edna, I dozed off."

"It's okay. Remember. Next hour." Her voice was deep and quite androgynous, and it was the closest thing to the idea of my mother's.

"Copy," My own voice wasn't anything like hers. Her voice was so unique, calming, in the times I had heard it.

Ed and I didn't get to talk often. It's been three years since the incident. I counted on the wall. The scrapes were deep. I had tallied numbers on the wall with my new body. It was armor. I looked tall and gruff, almost like a man. I could see myself on the mirror, hung up on the stone wall. My room was small, and aside from the dirt floor and stone walls, there was a wall in front of my bed. It was made of cell bars. Whoever wanted to look could see.

I was stuck in this...prison. See, we made a deal with someone we shouldn't have. A well known mobster and an alchemist, or so we thought. Nobody's ever seen him aside form those who make deals with him, but he goes by Truth. In exchange for our 'mother,' he'd take something. Only, we didn't know what it was.

That something ended up being my body, and Ed's leg, and in return for my soul, she got rid of her arm. But in the end, we were separated, and I've never seen her since the day. They had given us radios, and occasionally, Ed could talk to me through it. Recently, she's come up with a plan to get us out of here. By recently, I mean in the past year. She's only been able to talk to me twice then, so I'm still pretty in the dark about it.

Hours pass by fast when all you've been doing is just that for three years. I heard the door to this part of the building - the cellar, I assumed - open and slam shut, and the frantic panting of a voice I had studied so closely. Hurried footsteps rushed closer, and eventually, a woman met face to face with me, inches apart, the cell stopping us from enjoying this moment. I could feel something inside me well up. I felt myself sobbing, but there were no tears.

It wasn't. It couldn't be, right?

A tear slipped down her cheek, and it happened to be the answer to all of my questions.

"Edna!" I shouted, reaching to touch her.

"Alise!" Her expression showed pain and longing, holding my arms and resting her forehead on the bars.

She looked to the side, and soon enough, I heard banging on the steel door.

Quickly, she transmutated the cell, something I hadn't seen in so long.

"I know," She huffed, pulling me out and pushing me to run, "I had to make them believe I couldn't do it."

She was wearing Izumi's red coat, cross on the back and everything. She looked so young, yet old. She looked tired. Worn down. I only wondered what she had went through, trapped here like me. Her hair was longer, tied into a silky braid, but I couldn't see what she was wearing underneath her red coat because it was a few sizes too big, and it was closed up.

She's wrong. She is short. So short. She's always described herself as average and that people - whoever they are - tell her that she's extremely short.

So we ran. Fast as I've ever seen Ed run, and certainly the fastest I've ever run. Her golden hair, I couldn't help but admire. It left a trail, like a ray of sunlight behind her.

I couldn't tell you how far or fast we ran. But it was far enough that Ed and I had transmutated through the wall and barbed fence, jumping over the picket fence after that.

And on my way out, I turned my head, I was met by onyx ones, far away, watching. As I watched, I couldn't help but notice the flashing red reflecting on them, and I snapped my head in the direction of the light. The building was on complete chaos, sirens going off that I hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment, red signal lights blaring, and a small flame going off in the west wing.

We had a reason to run as far as we did. Both different, still oddly similar. Only, I wouldn't know how deep and dark Ed's was. And by the time the moon was up and the stars had filled the sky, Edna and I were in the forest, and she was shoving me into a car, an unknown woman in the front seat.


	2. A Difference

**A/N: Thank you so much for reviewing and taking time to read this story! I've read your reviews, and I have to say, thanks for all the feedback! I wanted to explain things. This will most likely be an all gender-swapped cast. And also that there are trigger warnings for s*xual harassment and possibly r*pe, seeing as this book is labeled "Fullmetal Escort." If you have a problem with it, I will put warnings before a chapter that has the power to make you uncomfortable. We will never get down to the nitty-gritty stuff because these characters are under 18 and I don't like writing that stuff :)Thank you!**

Soft ringing awoke the small form on the bed. Lately, it was getting harder and harder to get out of bed. Wasn't everything supposed to be so much better now? Edna had always had this illusion that when she broke Al and herself free, everything would be so much better.

It almost hurt to slip off of the Hughes' spare bed. Why did she feel this way? She turned the alarm clock off, climbing back to bed, noticing that Allison was gone, but strangely, not even caring.

She hoped that her new life would settle soon. That Mrs. and Mr. Hughes would somehow fill that empty void she had waited so long to fill. But things like this never worked.

Entering downstairs, she remembered the night before in flashes. Escaping from that awful place. Rory burning all the memories with it.

Not really.

Edna kind of wished Rory would melt her mind - perhaps even kill her to get rid of those memories. But often, when trapped in her cell, she would remind herself that Allison would be stuck forever. And then what would they do to her precious little sister? After all they'd done to her?

She had experienced it first hand, and there was no way in any world that she'd let any other soul go through it.

"Ed? Edna?" Somehow it always came down to this. Someone trying to snap Edna out of her trance.

"Sorry, yes, Hughes?" The dark haired woman gave a look of concern, taking Ed and guiding her to her seat at the breakfast table.

Edna nodded, giving a small smile, "Thanks, sorry, ma'am."

"Hughes is fine. May is, too."

"Oh, I see." Ed sat quietly, but it wasn't until after the Hughes' prayers that Edna noticed she wasn't even hungry.

How odd of her.

Usually, she scarfed down any food she could find.

"Say, Al, do you want this?" Edna asked.

"Oh, uh, I can't eat, Ed." She responded, sounding quite bashful

"And why's that? Not hungry, either?" Hughes looked at the two, catching the attention of her husband and her little boy.

"No, it's not that...I would love to eat it, if I could, but..."

At this point, Al couldn't believe Edna was going to make her say it. She must have known how embarrassing it was to Al that she was just a suit of armor, right? So why did she bring it up?

Unless...

_She didn't know_.

"Edna," Al said after a short pause, "You remember that day we tried to bring back mom?"

Edna flinched, suddenly remembering in flashes of purple and gray, the color of the incoming storm that day, and nodded.

"And how you gave up your arm for me to come back?"

This time, she remembered in a wave of heat from her automail, covered by her red coat.

_The pain_.

"Yeah."

"Well, they didn't...They didn't give you my body back."

Ed suddenly felt like lurching feeling in her stomach, and the Hughes grew more confused with every passing second.

"I'm just..." Al didn't want to say it.

"I'm just a soul, trapped in this armor." Al took off her armor, revealing Ed's blood seal inside.

_That was it._

Edna lurched backwards, making her chair fall backwards as she ran to the restroom and shut the door behind her.

May ran over to her, and Al followed, both patiently waiting outside the door and trying to calm Ed down, more May than Al.

Soft gagging sounds came from the other end, accompanied by a string of curses.

"Edna, please, open this door, we can help." May gave a solemn look towards Allison, "Hey, why don't you wait in the living room?" She gave a warm smile.

Allison knew that face. That expression. The expression that told her that she was the problem, the one that told her that she couldn't help. As kind as May was, it angered her a little internally.

The anger followed her all the way to the living room and lingered still when she sat on the couch. Awful. For years, these feelings found a home in the dark crevices of her heart. Lost in thought, she fiddled with her gloved hands.

She would fiddle with them up until when Ed and Hughes had walked out. For the first time, Alise could see it. All of the pain she was sure Edna had gone through.

Her choice of wardrobe - well, she was for sure that it was not Edna's choice. Her top was sleeveless, ending at her midriff, and it showed off her collarbone. Her skirt, even worse, only reached mid thigh and her fishnet stockings completed her black, leathered look. Her automail looked out of shape, done roughly, and Allison figured that a needed trip to see Winston was necessary.

This wasn't Edna. Wasn't her choice.

Suddenly, ideas flew into Al's mind, ideas that pained her to think of, ideas she didn't want.

Al remembered the building burning down, suddenly recalling all the girls flooding out of the prison of a building that they had all resided in for so long, trapped.

She didn't want to believe it. _Al had gotten away, lucky._

"Al, I'm sorry I acted the way I did. I really just haven't been feeling the greatest recently, and well, you know-" Edna was obviously embarrassed, rubbing her arm in anxiousness.

_How unlike Alise's memories of her._

"What did they do to you?" Al couldn't hold back the secrets she knew anymore.

"Wh-what...?" Ed seemed surprised, dumbfounded at the new wave of emotions passing through her younger sister.

"What. Did. They. Do. To. You." Allison pressed, standing up.

For a split second, Alise could see Edna's eyes - glossed over and tinted red. She looked..._vulnerable_.

But all of it came undone when she turned away, "I know you're confused, Alise, but it gives you no reason to talk to your older sister like that. I'll tell you. Over time, when I think you're ready."

"Edna! You've always been like this! You've always kept me in the dark. I'm mature enough to know, you just need to trust me." Allison sighed, placing a hand on her sister's shoulder.

She was fourteen, she had counted, which meant that Ed was fifteen, although she was unsure if Edna was even aware.

"Trust?"

A long, icy silence filled the air, Hughes watching their every move.

Alise only hummed a yes before a small, but strong pair of arms wrapped around her armor.

"You really have been the only one that's kept mine," She mumbled, sniffing and covering her face, burying it in Al's armor.

"And I intend to keep it that way," Al ran a hand through her sister's hair, and for once, she felt like she was making a difference.


End file.
